Communication equipment in telecom, datacom, professional audio and video, and harsh environments is typically designed to be installed within one or more cabinets, of the type illustrated in FIG. 1. Each cabinet usually conforms to the EIA (Electronics Industry Association) standard width of 19 or 23 inches and houses a multitude of card cages or rack units. Rack units in turn house a number of circuit pack modules (also referred to as electronic circuit packs). A representative rack unit is also illustrated in FIG. 7a. 
Each rack unit and/or circuit pack module within a rack unit typically requires the establishment of a multitude of communication links to effect intra-cabinet communication among collocated equipment. Traditionally, this intra-cabinet communication has been physically established using either electrical or optical interconnect cables (as illustrated in FIG. 1), and usually creating from such cables well known network topologies including star, ring, bus, and mesh. Cable systems, however, suffer from a number of shortcomings. Use of electrical or optical interconnect cables in many implementations results in cable clutter, which obstructs air flow for cooling, and interferes with moves/adds/changes. The complex cable arrangements involved typically require skilled technicians to install and maintain them over the course of their life. Electrical cables do not offer catastrophic fault isolation from surges, immunity to ground loop EMI (Electromagnetic Interference), nor immunity to common mode range issues associated with ground referenced systems. The optical connectors and transceivers used in such cable systems for providing intra-cabinet communication are generally relatively costly. The optical and electrical cables and cable harness assemblies that are used are typically made specifically for the particular cabinet and for its installed racks, card cages, and circuit pack modules. As a result these components generally: (A) increase commissioning time and complexity, and (B) Require specialized knowledge for installation, maintenance, and moves/adds/changes. On occasion, connector pins and threads can be become damaged if improperly installed resulting in costly field repair work. Optical and electrical cables used generally employ mechanical connectors that are sensitive to relatively common environmental factors such as dust, humidity, sea salt, temperature, thermal cycling and vibration.
What is needed therefore is a system and method for providing wireless communication between the aforesaid components in a cabinet.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,771,935 ('935) issued to Leggett discloses a wireless bus that replaces the hard-wired mid plane bus utilized in a standard telecommunication switch. Rather than using the usual wired connections between the mid plane bus and the various circuit boards or cards, a plurality of radio frequency antennae or probes are used for each such circuit board or card. The antennae or probes project into a common waveguide. By virtue of this arrangement, each circuit board or card is operable to communicate with the other circuit boards or cards on predetermined radio channels. '935 also discloses containment of the cards and their antennae within a conductive enclosure to permit wireless communication between components separated by intervening objects.
One disadvantage of the technology disclosed in '935 is that reflection of incident electromagnetic radiation off of the walls of the disclosed waveguide will generally result in multi path distortion. '935 does not disclose adequate means for mitigating such multi path distortion. The invention described in '935 could lead to a high number of sustained reflections of the electromagnetic radiation and therefore the communication channel capacity will be limited and/or the complexity of the required receiver will be significantly greater.
Also, it should be noted that '935 focuses on back plane/mid plane substitutive technology. Mid plane and back plane structures are typically constructed from Printed Circuit Board (“PCB”) materials and are generally limited in size to less than 60 cm×50 cm. These mid plane and back plane structures are usually integrated into a rack mount card cage that is subsequently installed within a cabinet. As stated earlier, a cabinet typically contains a number of these rack units that need to intercommunicate. The '935 technology therefore addresses intra-card cage communication only, whereas there is a need for a technology that provides wireless communication between multiple points throughout the interior of the cabinet, including between the various components whether the are located on the same or different card cages.
It is also noted neither '935 nor any other prior art address the issue of bandwidth management within the cabinet.
What is needed therefore is a system and method for providing intra-cabinet communication between the various broadband network components. A system and method is required that enables wireless communication between the various broadband network components located throughout the interior of the cabinet, while minimizing the effects of multi-path signal distortion. A system and method is also required that enables the deployment of wireless intra-cabinet communication that is easy to implement, and requires relatively inexpensive components. Also, there is a need for a system and method that permits efficient allocation of channel resources across domains, including SDMA, FDMA, TDMA, CDMA and PDMA domains (defined below), within the confines of the cabinet.